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Profile Information

Display Name:

digitalstream

Job Title:

CEO

Company:

Digital Stream

Type of Work:

Agency

Location:

Hamilton

Favorite Thing About SEO:

Seeing clients get results

Bio:

Digital Stream is a full service digital agency. Established in 1999, we focus on delivering high-quality web and online marketing services to our customers. Our experienced, dedicated staff work with you to develop products and services that deliver great results for your business. With offices in Hamilton and Auckland, Digital Stream offers a full range of web design and web development services.

You're right - I am absolutely tired of hearing "content is king" as the topic of a post followed by 800 words of finding new ways to restate the phrase "content is king." Happily, this post is entirely the opposite! A great, actionable resource that I'm sure a lot of us will be able to make use of. Consider yourself bookmarked and thumbs up'd both, sir. September 04, 2011

I think that feature is common knowledge to anyone who's ever had to regularly exclude prying relatives from a status update ;)
For me, the strongest difference between Facebook and Google+ is that Facebook has always felt like a place for my actual friends, and Google+ looks like it could me for all my connections. I like the G+ interface much better, so far. However, I'd be wary about the flood of marketers trying to jump in, because it'll just scare average people off. People can smell inauthenticity a mile away. The last thing G+ needs is a bunch of marketers yipping on about "Top 10 Conversion Tips" at each other.
That's why I think Google's ban on brands is a positive thing at this early stage. Otherwise you risk the G+ experience becoming like taking a family trip to a local pool, only to find it crowded with weird over-tanned men in speedos. August 07, 2011

With regard to the first point, I think this really depends on the purpose of a given page (and/or site.) If you have a page set up as a landing page for either SEO or PPC reasons, I don't think you'd want to have your opt-in module on some non-specific page. Not to mention that an opt-in module can be many things. If your opt-in takes the form of "get a rad and valuable download in exchange for your email address" you don't want to hide it. You want it right where people can see it from the get-go.

The "people look where other people look" is very useful indeed, and timely as I'm working on landing pages today as well! I think there's a note to be made about organic SEO: it's possible (but not necessarily advisable - it depends on the situation) to have PPC landing pages that also function as organic landing pages. If your PPC landing pages have an organic presence, I can't see a negative effect - either it enhances your brand presence for PPC customers, or it's a free click for those who opt to visit via organic results.

Cool post! Silly expriments can yeild serious results. Next time, try canonicalising to google.com and see if the Internet disappears in a giant vortex? Or maybe it'll just manifest the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. (Or, more terrifyingly, Clippy.)

This is great news - we'll definitely find a use for those extra keyword slots! One thing it would be nice to see is perhaps some (pro-only?) walkthroughs and/or tutorials on how to extract the most from the web app. To me that feels what it's really lacking at the moment - some good in-depth documentation. Of course, if I'm just being obtuse and there's tonnes of great documentation out there, feel free to point me towards it! :) One other thing it would be great to see are some really deep case studies on how the web app has helped Moz Pro members do SEO for clients - maybe this is something we'll have to write ourselves, down the track.

I couldn't be in more agreement with this article. The problem I see SEOs running into time and time again is the "just get us ranking" demand from clients. No amount of explanation and examples about the need for a good website with excellent architecture or SEO being part of a wider brand strategy can defy this. It's why black and dark grey hat SEO still thrives - there's no shortage of customers who simply want to see themselves at the top of the SERPs, and when they're penalised or knocked off by someone else doing the same thing, the black hat SEO who got them there just fades into the night - taking their money with them. Time and time again I run OSE analyses on sites that have scraped (often literally) their way to the top with comment spam, paid links, scraped content, content and link farms. Seeing that never fails to hurt.

Great infographic - will make a nice addition to my wall of cheat-sheets.

This is more of a joke than a proper reccomendation, but you could have perhaps come up with a single graphic element to illustrate each status code. For example, the 302 redirect could be a set of dripping fangs (Because of the way it sucks away link juice. Hilarity ensues.)Come to think of it, it's probably a good thing I didn't make this infographic. There would have been way too many zombies and vampires.

Some industries are rife with influencers and bloggers who you can form relationships with (and get links further down the line, as Rand points out.) But what about those industries that don't have a tangible human influencer element behind them? Of course, all industries are staffed by humans, but as far as getting links goes, an industry without much mass appeal (like sawmilling - to pick an example at random) might not have the web presence and link attainability that something like travel blogging would have. I think with these kind of less bloggable industries you're mostly stuck with the basics - directory submission and ol' fashioned link begging.

...

It suddenly occurs to me I have no idea if there are any quality sawmilling blogs out there. Checking now.

One thing I've been wondering if it's possible to quantify - how much of the Survey is based on hard data vs gut feelings? Both can be accurate, but it would be interesting to get an idea of the ratio :)

Well done! I'm looking forward to reading. Just one question: I'd be interested to know if you're looking at putting any chapters online as free content to build interest? Not that it will be needed if the response here is anything to go by, but it would be cool to have something I could recommend to friends so they could try before they buy... March 17, 2011

As an Australian with family in Brisbane, living in New Zealand (and with friends in Christchurch, who are all okay, thankfully) this means a hell of a lot to me.
Thanks SEOmoz, this is awesome. March 03, 2011

One thing I've noticed is that when you're a small fry in the social media space, particularly on Twitter, speed is of the essence when it comes to adding value and gaining followers (and attention!) for yourself.

For instance, I've noticed when a Twitter account with a lot of followers tweets a question or makes a suggestion, the quickest feedback to the tweet often earns the most love in terms of retweets and/or new followers. It's often been the case that I see an Influencer ask a question or makes a statement that I'm sure I can add value to - but then I look at the time since it's been tweeted and, too often, it was two hours ago and they've got 5k replies already. Unfortunately, replying to a tweet late only gets love from scrapers and bots, whereas if you're timely with a reply that adds value, you can pick up lots of new real live human followers. You see the same thing here on Moz, a bit. If a blog post comment is placed early, it tends to earn thumbs up more easily than a comment that might have more value but takes place further down the conversation.

So I suppose I should ask the question: does anyone pay particular attention to social media accounts in order to reply quickly to add the most value and pick up new followers? Do you think it matters?

Anyway, excellent post, and looking forward to seeing more Whiteboard Fridays from you down the track!

I particularly like #8 - "Set up a KPI dashboard". It's pretty easy to forget in the flurry of setting up a new site that, for all the effort that goes in to it, these key metrics are what your site will live and die by. Having them all in one spreadsheet makes perfect sense, but it's one of those things that just hadn't occurred to me until it was pointed out.

Moz-sters, what do you think of the idea of letting Analytics run for a couple of weeks to a month before re-optimising pages, if necessary, for "surprise" search terms that you might not have thought of in the initial keyword research phase? I find there are often some out-of-left-field but productive keywords hidden in the Analytics for a new site that you'd just never have been able to research beforehand.

What interests me about this post are the implications for SEO in a world where Google even approaches the functionality that Danny describes. Imagine it!

"That lavender's <smell> tags are all incorrectly labelled <roses>! That's what's been dragging us down in the ScentSERPS!

"We figured it out - your movie theatre chain has had rel=canonical incorrectly applied by the consulting company. That's why 99% of your theatres have only hobos in attendance while the first theatre has about 60,000 visitors in line every night."

And I suppose while it's got less to do with SEO, we might have an issue with this kind of thing.

"Open the Bay Area Restaurant doors, Google."

"I can't let you do that, Dave."

"Wait, what? Why not?"

"It's a really bad restaurant, Dave. Look at these one-star reviews!"

Anyway, it's nice to see this kind of philosophical stuff popping up on Moz. Thanks for the post, Danny - it's one to think about!